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Our Issues

Our advocacy work delivers lasting solutions by promoting policy reforms that foster strong, resilient communities. These policy reforms ensure that current and future generations will benefit from the changes made today. Read CARE Action's 2018 advocacy agenda, and learn more about each of our issues below.

Lifesaving foreign assistance funding represents one percent of the U.S. budget; just one penny on the federal dollar. And yet this penny is incredibly powerful. It saves millions of lives every year, addresses the root causes of poverty, decreases dependency, and builds stronger, more resilient societies.

This one percent helps combat deadly diseases, provides access to basic education to millions of girls around the world, helps ensure nursing mothers have access to clean drinking water, and provides small-holder farmers with the knowledge they need to grow healthy sustainable crops. This one percent enables families and communities to work their way out of extreme poverty and build financial independence. It’s a hand-up, not a handout.

What’s more, foreign assistance benefits our own nation’s security by alleviating suffering and decreasing poverty to create a more prosperous and safer world for everyone.

More than 200 million women in developing countries want the ability to choose the timing of their pregnancies but lack access to the right tools. Due to the dangerously low accessibility of contraceptives, information, and women’s medical services, pregnancy can put these women in life-threatening situations.

CARE Action! recognizes that access to maternal and reproductive health services, including the healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, is a key component of preventing maternal and child mortality. We advocate for the U.S. Government’s adoption of a comprehensive approach to sexual, reproductive, and maternal health through policies that increase the quality, access, and availability of reproductive and maternal health services.

More robust funding for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health programs and International Family Planning in the International Affairs Budget.

The Reach Every Mother and Child Act, bipartisan legislation on Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health that would strengthen the U.S. commitment to ending preventable maternal and child deaths and through support for proven health interventions.

Every day, a child dies in the arms of her mother from malnourishment.

We face a greater challenge than ever before: ending hunger and malnutrition in the face of environmental degradation and phenomena like El Nino. Almost 800 million people are chronically hungry and over 161 million children stunted. At the same time, every year, we use 1.5 times the planet’s resources, depleting them faster than they are naturally regenerated. Agricultural productivity has already been reduced and threatens to plummet further – and drastically in some areas.

As a partner in the fight against hunger, CARE Action! advocates for U.S. government support and funding for comprehensive food and nutrition security policies and programs that feed more people in a more sustainable, equitable, and flexible way. We also advocate for sustainable resource management because the livelihoods of small-scale food producers, most of whom are women, are directly dependent on healthy natural resources.

Calls for reforms to the International Food Aid program to reach more people faster by making it more efficient and flexible.

Supports bipartisan, comprehensive food and nutrition security legislation that improves and codifies Feed the Future into law and ensures sustainable programs that build resilience and address the underlying drivers of vulnerability.

The world continues to witness an unprecedented rise in the scale and number of humanitarian crises unfolding around the globe. CARE is currently responding to 41 emergencies around worldwide with a focus on the needs of women and children.

CARE Action! advocates for the incorporation of the protection of women and children in global emergency responses, building linkages between short-term emergency response and longterm development, and ensuring humanitarian access to vulnerable communities.

Calls for the U.S. Government to uphold commitments made to responding to humanitarian emergencies, specifically addressing the unique needs of women and girls, and to protecting civilians from gender-based violence in emergency settings.

Advocates for the U.S. Government to ensure the International Affairs Budget includes adequate funding for the response to humanitarian emergencies, including building resilience and building links between short-term emergency response and long-term development.

It is estimated that at least 1 out of 3 women globally will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, bringing Gender-Based Violence (GBV) to epidemic proportions in countries around the world. While women and girls are the primary victims of GBV, men and boys are also victimized and face similar difficulties in obtaining treatment and post-assault recovery.

CARE Action! is promoting the integration of gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment throughout U.S. foreign assistance programs. We support efforts that incorporate strong policies and robust resources in an effort to prevent and address child marriage and to combat gender-based violence.

The bipartisan International Violence Against Women Act, which builds on existing efforts to integrate a coordinated strategy for responding to gender-based violence throughout all development and foreign policy initiatives.

The Administration’s formulation and implementation of a comprehensive, interagency strategy that will address the challenges of child marriage, and calls on Congress to adequately fund efforts to respond to child marriage globally.

Thank you for your interest in our sister organization, CARE, whose mission is to serve individuals and families in the poorest communities in the world. By clicking the "GO TO CARE" button below, you will be redirected to the CARE website